June 22, 2007

Dear Mr. Zucker and Ms. Murdock,

As graduates of Antioch College in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we can identify with the tragic uncertainty now facing the campus community after the Board of Trustees suddenly announced it is closing the College in Yellow Springs.

We, too, were told that the College would likely be closing at some time during our tenure there because enrollments had dropped and the endowment was too small. As it turned out, that didn’t happen. But the internal debate over the relationship between the main College campus and Antioch’s satellite campuses (it was never a true university no matter what the college PR department said) was high on the agenda in those years.
Many of us remember refusing to shake hands with then College President, William Birenbaum at graduation ceremonies in 1980 as a public protest. It wasn’t merely that we disliked his ideas about education, his arrogance in dealing with students, faculty and staff, or his misguided attempts to funnel resources away from Yellow Springs. An even greater transgression was his total disdain for a cornerstone principle of Antioch College: community governance.

We are outraged and saddened to see that the current Board of Trustees has exhibited a similar lack of regard in the way it has sprung news of the College’s closing on the campus body politic. It has compounded the wrongdoing by not outlining a clear role for that community in key decision making about what kind of institution will supposedly reopen its doors in Yellow Springs in four years.

As this year’s alumni reunion goes forward, we want to deliver a clear message to you and the current College administration: We will not support any future educational institution bearing Antioch’s name that fails to return control and academic focus to the main College in Yellow Springs.

The Board of Trustees needs to be comprised of members who support that mission and who have demonstrated their commitment by contributing to the College campaign. The assets of the College need to be returned to the College—including Antioch University McGregor, which should be merged with the College and come under the control of the College President.

College leaders should launch a democratic process of renewal on campus that will result in a plan for a future educational institution in Yellow Springs that respects the best traditions of Antioch. The current Board of Trustees has betrayed those traditions, both in the way it announced the College closing and in actions it has taken—or failed to take—that have brought us to this pass.

Specifically, the current Board of Trustees reneged on a commitment to raise the needed funds to implement the Renewal Commission Plan that it imposed on the College. In fact, most individual trustees did not even contribute to the campaign. When the fundraising campaign foundered, trustees failed to address the obvious implications for the College. In addition, the board only recently discovered problems with University bookkeeping that disguised previous losses. The University Board of Trustees has failed miserably in its legal and ethical responsibilities and has lost all moral right to the Antioch name and mission. The time has come to return control of Antioch College and its assets to the College community, including its alumni.

We stand ready to pledge money and fundraising energy to a reopening of Antioch. But we will not support any plan created without the involvement and leadership of members of the College community. Nor will we back a future institution that fails to uphold the school’s long established standards of shared decision-making, innovation and the notion that even the privileged realm of higher education can be a proving ground for social justice.

Sincerely,

Barbara Solow, Class of 1980, Highland Park, NJ
Christopher Adams, ’87, Landsdowne, PA
Jeanne Badman, ’80, St. Paul, MN
E. Ann Baldwin, 80, Higganum, CT
Helen Bloch, ‘78 Forest Hills, NY
Douglas Brodoff, ’77, Paris, France
Marianne Connolly, ‘80, Amherst, MA
Peter Crosman, ’77, Flintridge, CA
Laura Drey, ’80, Durham, NC
David Feinstein, ’79, San Francisco, CA
Cora Hook, ‘79, Bethlehem, PA
Rob Kenter, ’80, Toronto, ON Canada
Laura Markham, ‘80, New York, NY
Marc J. Masurovsky, ‘77, Falls Church, VA
Barbara McCann, ‘83, Washington, DC
Lizzie Olesker, ’79, Brooklyn, NY
Leslie A. Pownall Barh, ‘83, Buffalo, MN
Glenn Paris, ’80, San Diego, CA
Lydia Dean Pilcher, ’80, New York, NY
Phaye Poliakoff-Chen, ‘80, Baltimore, MD
Scott Pollock, ’80, Evanston, IL
David Pratt, ’80, Brooklyn, NY
Sandina Robbins, ‘80, Oakland, CA
Jodi Solomon, ‘80, Boston, MA

cc: Steven Lawry, President, Antioch College
Risa Grimes, Director of Alumni Relations

I like what you wrote.

I’m glad you’re going to the reunion & hope you’ll post your thoughts on the web as things develop over the weekend. You’ll be speaking and acting for lots of us alums who can’t be there, and you have my support.

Thanos Fatouros ‘88